


Strength in Options

by Diary



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Background Allison Argent, Bechdel Test Fail, Blood Magic, Canon Character of Color, Druid Braeden (Teen Wolf), Forests/Woods, Hurt Braeden (Teen Wolf), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Isaac Lahey's Past Abuse, Isaac Lahey's Scarves, Late Night Conversations, Morally Ambiguous Character, Mountain Ash, Nemeton, POV Isaac Lahey, POV Nonhuman, Post-Episode AU: s03e01 Tattoo, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 22:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: AU. Shortly after Tattoo, Isaac comes across a hurt Braeden. Complete.





	Strength in Options

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Teen Wolf.

Deaton had warned the ice bath would make Isaac weak for several days.

Walking through the moonlit woods, he wonders if it’s doing something to his head, too. By now, he’s mostly gotten control of his wolf senses, but something inside him is off-kilter, and he can’t get a grip on what’s setting off the confusing feelings inside.

Abruptly, he stops.

When the girl had rescued him from the alphas, he’d tried to keep her scent within distance as long as he could.

The twins said they killed her, and he suddenly hates himself for believing them. Out of everything they’ve done, them lying about such a thing wouldn’t be surprising.

Except, it could be her dead body, goes through his head.

Wishing he were at full strength, he heads towards it.

Oh, God, she’s alive, floods through him, but taking in her fear, he stops himself from rushing over.

“Miss? I’m, uh, Isaac Lahey. You saved me from a pack of alphas. Do you remember?”

Through the fear, there’s a hardness to her eyes when she looks at him, and respect fills him. She’s bleeding too much, she’s literally crawling, or she was before he spoke, and she’s absolutely terrified, but her eyes make it clear, if he tries anything, she’ll go down fighting as much as she can.

Kneeling down, he checks to make sure no claws are showing before holding his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. Do you want to see my eyes? I’m not an alpha. They’re yellow.”

“Show me,” she orders, and he winces at how much it must hurt for her to get the words out with her throat practically torn out.

He nods.

After a moment, there’s a tiny slump to her body. “If you want to help me, there’s a tree stump. I don’t know where. I don’t even know if it’ll work. But I need to find it. Either help me, or leave me alone.”

There’s no verbal threat, but he knows, if he chooses any other option besides these two, she won’t react well.

“Okay. I- Um, how do we go about finding a tree stump? Do you know if it’s near anything we could look for? Do you want- I think I should carry you.”

If she dies in his arms- But she survived an alpha literally clawing out her throat. He’s not sure she’s even human. After she rescued him, he has to try to do something, and he can’t get on her bad side in the process.

“I can-”

It seems she’s finally registered she’s crawling around.

“You’ll get blood on your clothes.”

“That’s okay.” He takes off his scarf. “I’m going to come over there, okay? I’m not sure how sanitary this is, but it’s clean. Why don’t we try wrapping it around your neck? Maybe it’ll stop the bleeding some?”

“Okay.”

He’s not sure how, but he gets most of the skin and everything else contained underneath the scarf. “Ready for me to pick you up?”

“Yes.”

He does, and trying not to flinch or jump, he manages not to drop her when she touches near his eyes. “Use your wolf eyes. It’s hidden from regular human ones.”

Starting to walk, he asks, “So, uh, why’d you rescue me?”

“I was paid to. That was a mistake. I thought I could trust the person paying me, but she’s-” She makes a frustrated noise. “It turns out, her ideas and mine about certain things are different.”

He’s tempted to apologise. He’s tempted to thank her for doing it anyways.

“Well, that sounds incredibly cryptic, doesn’t it? I’m not very good at- My name is Braeden. I’ve had a sixth sense all my life. Some people I’m not sure I should tell you about were helping me learn the ways of the druids.”

“Nice to meet you. Like I said, I’m Isaac Lahey. I know you know I’m a werewolf, but if you don’t know, I was human until last year. I was bitten.”

“By Derek Hale. I know. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

She doesn’t give any reaction, and he wishes he knew what she thought about this. Sixteen is practically an adult. He’s not a victim anymore. Even though someone like her would clearly never consider someone like him, his age shouldn’t be part of the reason.

Something catches his eye, and he turns.

There’s a tree stump, and something about it makes everything tingle inside.

“It’s okay. It has bad things, but it’s not bad by itself. Take me to it.”

Setting her down beside it, he hopes whatever she thinks might happen does. Please, he thinks, help her.

Shaky hands undo his scarf, and too-bright red blood covers black. Bringing her hand down to press her palm against the stump, she closes her eyes.

Even knowing it’s not longer than a few seconds, it feels as if time stretches on forever.

Then, she sighs.

Knowing this isn’t good, he tries not to panic.

Opening her eyes, she shakes her head. “Thank you for trying. Sometimes, you have to accept defeat. Don’t worry, it’ll be soon. Quick. You shouldn’t stick around. I know the forest will make good use of my body.”

“No. I’m not- you can’t just give up. You survived an alpha. If you go back to the hospital, if we get the police to protect you better this time-”

“Isaac, the alphas won’t stop until I’m dead. I thought, if I could heal myself, I could stay a step ahead of them, but as soon as they know I’m still alive, they’ll keep coming with everything they have.”

“I know someone,” he blurts out. “I don’t know if he’s a druid, but Dr Deaton, he-”

He flinches at the look she gives him.

“No!”

Despite himself, he stumbles backwards a bit.

“He’s part of- His sister, Marin Morell, is the one who betrayed me. He has a plan that must be stopped, and she-” Her eyes flutter, and he can tell she’s losing even more energy. “She might not be on his side, but she’s not on the right side, either.”

Numerous questions swarm inside of him, but pushing them away, he asks, “If I bleed on the tree, will it help you?”

“No.”

Something about her vitals- “Are you sure?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “It’s not something I’m going to ask, and you shouldn’t try it without knowing more. A lot more. What I can tell you is that it could have bad consequences down the line.”

Going over, he kneels down. “I’ve been suffering bad consequences for things I shouldn’t have my whole life.” Laying his left arm on the stump, he produces his claws. “If I can help you, if this will make you better, I want that. I want to. Keep your eyes on my face.”

She does until they both feel a change in the air.

“Get back,” she orders. “It’s accepted your sacrifice. It’s going to help me.”

He finds himself obeying, and he watches as vines appear.

“Let it.”

The vines wrap around her neck, and he hopes he’s doing the right thing by standing there watching instead of trying to stop them.

Blood coats the vines, and then- it’s as if the vines are absorbing it.

She goes slack, the vines disappear, and rushing over, relief fills him.

She’s unconscious, but his senses tell him she’s perfectly healthy. Carefully moving her so he can see her throat, he sees there are deep scars, and he imagines they’ll be sore or achy, but her throat isn’t bleeding or open. She should be able to talk and eat without too much difficulty.

The question of what to do hits him.

He can’t take her to the hospital. The alphas probably would find out as soon as he did. He definitely can’t take her to Deaton; even if she’s wrong and Deaton does help her, she’d never trust him (Isaac), and she might do bad things to all them.

Derek is a possibility, but- He knows Derek is busy focusing on finding Erica and Boyd. If Derek’s too busy to deal with Braeden right now, he’s not sure he could protect her from Peter, and Peter might decide to hurt her.

The sound of a car fills his senses, and turning, he sees Allison Argent parking.

Fear and loathing fills him. Just what he needs, a hunter in the woods when he’s got-

He can’t believe he’s thinking this: Braeden has scars. He doesn’t have to say anything about her being a druid, and right now, she can’t. If he came up to Allison Argent with an unconscious human and explained alphas are after her, yeah, he might be stabbed with knives again or worse, but the Argents are serious about protecting humans.

Maybe, he shouldn’t have been thinking so much, because, now, Allison’s disappeared.

Hopefully, she didn’t see him with the unconscious human and isn’t waiting out-of-sight for the right moment to attack.

Hoping he’s not about to do something completely stupid, he pockets the scarf, picks Braeden up, and heads for the car.

When he gets there, he sets Braeden down to look around.

The smell of mountain ash makes his nose itch, and finding the car door unlocked, he soon finds a bag of it in the backseat.

Option one: Lock Braeden in the car, and wait until either she wakes up or Allison comes back so that he can explain the situation.

Option two: Take the bag, find somewhere in the woods to hide, and wait until either Braeden wakes up or it’s daylight.

…

Setting her in the cave, he makes sure she has plenty of room to move but that he also has plenty of room to hide out of sight from anyone approaching outside and pours a semi-circle between them.

Praying he doesn’t regret this (what if she gets sick or starts bleeding again and he needs to get inside?), he sits down.

…

Movement wakes him up, and blinking, he sees she’s coming to.

“Hey, it’s okay. I haven’t hurt you. I put down mountain ash, so, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

Effortlessly standing up, she approaches the line, and when her hand moves above it, he’s not sure, but he thinks the line becomes a little straighter and tighter. “Where’d a werewolf get mountain ash?”

“I stole it from a hunter.”

Quirking an eyebrow, she gives him a vaguely amused look.

He’s suddenly aware of his dirty, bloody clothes, his gangly body, and the fact he’s a confused boy. Her clothes are dirty and bloody, too, but she’s strong, beautiful, and she knows so much more than he does.

“Time to leave, then. I appreciate what you did for me. Someday, I might be able to pay you back. But right now, you aren’t of any more use to me.”

“Do you know anything about kanimas?”

Surprise crosses her face. “I’ve read some about them. Why?”

“A kanima killed my father. I, uh, please, don’t say you’re sorry. My father was a bad person. He hurt me all the time. So, uh, if it’d just been my dad- I don’t know. I might have been able to be okay with it.”

“It wasn’t, though. This kanima was killing other people. My alpha, Derek, the betas the alphas took, Erica and Boyd, we all thought the kanima was this girl. She’s sixteen, too, and we all went to school together. Derek told us to kill her, and we tried. We came close, too.”

He takes a breath. “Except, it wasn’t her. We almost killed this innocent human girl. The reason I’m telling you this is- I’m hoping you’ll trust me. You saved my life. I want to help you. I won’t lie to you about anything.”

The thought, maybe, he should have put them on opposite sides of the mountain ash- No. He’s sorry if she feels trapped, but he won’t hurt her, and she should be able to cross it. If he’d put himself on the other side, he’d undoubtedly be trapped.

She sits down, and he follows suit.

“You almost killed an innocent sixteen-year-old girl. But you genuinely thought you were protecting the town by doing it?”

He nods.

There’s a stretch of silence as she studies him.

“Do you know a Scott McCall?”

Surprised, he nods. “Yeah. Uh, Scott’s a beta. Or an omega. He hurt Derek. I’m not- he wants to protect the town, too. He’s looked out for me a few times.”

What he did to Derek, though-

“He’s not an alpha?”

“Who, Scott? No. He was bitten, too, just a little while before I was. He refused to join Derek’s pack, but he’s- He has yellow eyes, just like mine.”

She sighs. “Alan Deaton wants to turn Scott McCall into an alpha, and then, he wants to use Scott to do something terrible. I can’t tell you what right now, but trust me, it’s bad. I’m not sure how Derek fits in when it comes to the full scheme, but the alphas want Derek for their pack, and Deaton hopes this will get Derek out of the way. Derek might be able to stop Scott.”

“Then, I need to take you to Derek,” he says. “He’ll listen.”

“I’m supposed to do this without getting anyone else involved.” Scoffing, she gestures to him before her hand goes up to her scars. “A plus for effort, I suppose. Why did I think I could?”

Hating the feelings going through her, he makes sure he keeps his voice calm and gentle. “You’re strong. Someone hurt you, and that’s not your fault. You saved me, and you survived an alpha. If it matters, scars or not, you’re still beautiful. Really, uh, you’re a-amazing. Sometimes, though, people just need help. You can still stop whatever Deaton has planned. Derek would do anything to keep this town safe. If Deaton’s plans are a threat to it-”

“Deaton’s plans are a threat to the whole world.”

She’s dead serious, he can tell.

“Then, let us help.”

There’s more silence, and then, this beautiful wave of strength and determination emits from her.

“I’m not agreeing to anything but to a talk right now. Can you get me to Derek without anyone seeing me?”

“Yes.”

They both stand, and walking over, she waves her hand, and the mountain ash parts for her.

Taking his hand, she squeezes it, and then, leads him out.

Outside, it’s daylight.

Letting go of the hand, she says, “Lead the way then, Isaac Lahey.”

“I’ll call Derek, first. Then, we’ll meet him.”

She nods.


End file.
